UN proposes ban on incubators for abandoned babies

BERLIN (AP) — German pastor Gabriele Stangl says she will never forget the harrowing confession she heard in 1999. A woman said she had been brutally raped, got pregnant and had a baby. Then she killed it and buried it in the woods near Berlin.

Stangl wanted to do something to help women in such desperate situations. So the following year, she convinced Berlin’s Waldfriede Hospital to create the city’s first so-called “baby box.” The box is actually a warm incubator that can be opened from an outside wall of a hospital where a desperate parent can anonymously leave an unwanted infant.

In multiple European countries, women who recently gave birth are legally allowed to leave their newborns in warm, publically-accessible incubators.

The incubators are found at some hospitals and can be opened from the outside. The point of these incubators, often called baby boxes, is to allow mothers to abandon unwanted babies in a safe and anonymous way.

But the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child is now speaking out against the practice and asking the EU for a baby box ban, Jewish World Review reported.

A so called baby box can be found at many hospitals through Europe, where a mother can leave her baby anonymously. UN says it violates the babies right to know their parents. I guess UN finds it a better solution if mothers, who for example were raped, rather kill their unwanted baby.